Editor’s Note: This post first appeared November 24, 2010.
When you’re a kid everyone asks you what’s your favorite color. This is a silly question. There are too many colors to choose from. Like it is fighting over green yellow and black. Because I like all of them even other colors. I like black because it’s dark. If you press hard it looks dark and nice and pretty. I press my pencil hard to get that color. I like green because it’s so shiny and my tongue is green right now because I got a green lollipop. I like yellow because it’s so bright. I like violet because I can mix violet with dark blue and make dark violet or mix violet with light blue and make light violet. I don’t like pink because I’m a girl. I like it because when I think of red I think of a pinkish red and that reminds me of pink. I like red because you need it to make brown. When you look at paintings you see the colors you like. Vincent van gogh has a painting Starry Night and I see green yellow black and violet. Mommy sees green yellow and blue. Maybe because I don’t like blue as much as violet.
Names for colors are funny. I can call it violet and a frend says purple but that’s different. I have a fairy book called Saffron the Yellow Fairy but they changed it to Sunny the Yellow Fairy because its easy because saffron can be a color and a spice. Another book is called Inky the Indigo Fairy. I know what indigo is but some people call it bluejeens. If I was a fairy I would be Blackie the Black Fairy.
When I start a picture I always start with black pencil. I like how dark it is. Sometimes I color the hole page black. Now I’m thinking something. Black is maybe my favorite color. A girl in my class Imi says black is not a color. She says all sorts of people don’t like black so there. Her favorite color is white. So I tell her on white paper it is not a color because you can’t see it. I don’t think there are girl colors or boy colors or grownup colors. There are just colors. Maybe if someone asks me what is my favorite color I will have to say black. even if all sorts of people don’t like black. And if someone says what wait what? I’ll say well hands on me 1, 2, 3 what do you like?